"Accept this gentleman's offer, sir, till to-morrow," said Mr.
S - -, "I can then make more comfortable arrangements for your
family; but we are crowded - crowded to excess. My wife and
daughters are obliged to sleep in a little chamber over the stable,
to give our guests more room. Hard that, I guess, for decent people
to locate over the horses."
These matters settled, Moodie returned with Tom Wilson to the
little parlour, in which I had already made myself at home.
"Well, now, is it not funny that I should be the first to welcome
you to Canada?" said Tom.
"But what are you doing here, my dear fellow?"
"Shaking every day with the ague. But I could laugh in spite of my
teeth to hear them make such a confounded rattling; you would think
they were all quarrelling which should first get out of my mouth.
This shaking mania forms one of the chief attractions of this new
country."
"I fear," said I, remarking how thin and pale he had become, "that
this climate cannot agree with you."
"Nor I with the climate. Well, we shall soon be quits, for, to let
you into a secret, I am now on my way to England."
"Impossible!"
"It is true."
"And the farm - what have you done with it?"
"Sold it."
"And your outfit?"
"Sold that too."
"To whom?"
"To one who will take better care of both than I did. Ah! such a
country! - such people! - such rogues! It beats Australia hollow; you
know your customers there - but here you have to find them out. Such
a take-in! - God forgive them! I never could take care of money;
and, one way or other, they have cheated me out of all mine. I have
scarcely enough left to pay my passage home. But, to provide
against the worst, I have bought a young bear, a splendid fellow,
to make my peace with my uncle. You must see him; he is close by in
the stable."
"To-morrow we will pay a visit to Bruin; but tonight do tell us
something about yourself, and your residence in the bush."
"You will know enough about the bush by-and-by. I am a bad
historian," he continued, stretching out his legs and yawning
horribly, "a worse biographer. I never can find words to relate
facts. But I will try what I can do; mind, don't laugh at my
blunders."
We promised to be serious - no easy matter while looking at and
listening to Tom Wilson, and he gave us, at detached intervals, the
following account of himself:
